Letterkenny is a runaway success on Crave-TV, but the comedy cult hit got its start on social media.
Co-creator Jared Keeso and his best friend Nathan Dales produced comedy shorts on YouTube and they immediately went viral with views topping the seven-million mark. Based on the unprecedented on-line success, Crave TV immediately commissioned an entire season of half-hour shows, and the rest is history.
Now entering its fourth season Letterkenny is consistently the most popular show on Crave, but becoming a comedy cult hero wasn鈥檛 what star and creator Jared Keeso was striving for for when he took up acting.
After rave reviews for his performance as Don Cherry in two CBC movies, Keeso thought a trip to Hollywood to pursue his dramatic career was the next logical step.
It was an experience the Listowel, Ontario native would like to forget.
He says he gave Hollywood a shot but quickly soured on the idea once he was down there.
鈥淚t just didn鈥檛 make sense to me to just be down there and giving so much importance to these people and this business, when I didn鈥檛 care about it. It was artificial, it made me feel like I was fake.鈥�
Keeso returned to Canada with a new appreciation for the work being done north of the border.
鈥淭he Canadian industry, has given me everything that I have, and I want to give back to that. On top of that, I鈥檓 happier here. I鈥檓 not happy down there. I like this country. I want to live here. I want to work here. And I want to build up a system like they have down there.鈥�
Fans of Letterkenny are happy with his decision too, and now they can experience the show live as the cast embarks on a cross-Canada live tour in March.
W5's documentary 'Letterkenny' airs Saturday at 7 p.m. on CTV
